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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28008075">lacrimosa</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/exeuntwendigo/pseuds/exeuntwendigo'>exeuntwendigo</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Death Stranding (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Demens Higgs Monaghan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 10:55:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,204</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28008075</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/exeuntwendigo/pseuds/exeuntwendigo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s growing dark outside, this new world he has seen for all of a day. Shadows of boulders breaching the navy sky fall long and cold on the endlessly bare ground. Chiral clouds blot out any light from the moon or stars, there’s only the faraway glow of a city he had been heading toward, golden beams that blur through the haze of an oncoming downpour. Rain falling where his Daddy is, a monster made of death. Higgs will never have to see him again.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>lacrimosa</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oESM64gU5M">x</a> // <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQMsS4OdWpY">x</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There’s blood on his hands. It’s dry, nearly black and flaking off in patches, itching skin and collecting underneath his nails. There’s blood on his hands but also on his wrists and down his forearms, trails that had slid in sheets and fell to the concrete floor. He isn’t going to expend the energy to try and get the inevitable stain out, he’ll end up only with blistered palms and a waste of a night. Blood doesn’t come out of concrete. It seeps and haunts. There’s a rug he can move to cover it up instead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Higgs lowers his hands to the sandy dirt in front of his crossed legs and scrapes them across the ground. It stings, small sharp rocks and grains of gravel digging into his sore skin, not quite breaking through it. He thinks, a suggestion from the back of his mind, that he deserves worse.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s growing dark outside, this new world he has seen for all of a day. Shadows of boulders breaching the navy sky fall long and cold on the endlessly bare ground. Chiral clouds blot out any light from the moon or stars, there’s only the faraway glow of a city he had been heading toward, golden beams that blur through the haze of an oncoming downpour. Rain falling where his Daddy is, a monster made of death. Higgs will never have to see him again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Thunder rolls loud and too nearby for his liking, and though he does not want to crawl down into the shelter he has no other choice but to brave it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The rooms still stink. He knows now he should have left as soon as Daddy was dead and not waited the night. Lying beside him hadn’t brought him back, it had only let a rotting scent linger.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m gonna…” he says to an empty room, then clicks his jaw shut and steps to the bathroom. He might not care to clean the stain off the floor, but he can wash it from himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The moment he catches sight of himself in the mirror, Higgs freezes. Wide eyes, a contrast of color surrounded by the abyss of crimson dried dark. Daddy had been above him when the knife went in, gasping and slackening his grip on Higgs’ neck to run slick fingers over the gash in his own, warmth falling down Higgs’ arms and onto his face. Now that he sees the aftermath the reaction is immediate—an overwhelming urge to vomit. He brings one hand up to his neck, his own drenched in another’s blood that has stayed slightly damp from sweat, and drags fingers through it gently, following the motion with eyes unfocused.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Blunt nails digging into the divot of his collar break him from the trance, and he turns from the mirror in a jolt, exhaling sharply. He’s shaking. He grits his teeth and heads for the shower.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The water is too hot, searing hands and feet that had grown numb from the winter air, but that works all the better for Higgs. Gives him an opportunity to feel something, even if it’s pain. A physical ache that burrows no deeper than the muscle and sinew, doesn’t reach his bones, doesn’t reach his heart. The red he sees is only the evidence of his own choices being rinsed down the drain and into the earth. It’ll join the rest of that man.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A wretched sob echoes loudly off the tile so sudden that it takes him a startled moment to realize it came from his own throat, ripped untimely and left to wither out in the open. His breath is a wobbly thing. He straightens out of the spray and blinks tears from his eyes, trying futilely for a moment where he believes he can hold everything down, yet a pathetic sound spills from his lips.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shit,” he curses to the ceiling, glaring at the steel before falling to his knees and succumbing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Only once the water goes tepid does he shut it off, nearly shivering. He avoids his reflection.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The stale scent of rot hits him in a wave when he steps out from the barrier of the bathroom door, bundled in fresh clothes that cover his arms. He still halfway suspects to see blood dripping down them, but underneath the black fabric it’s harder for his mind to trick him into thinking it’s there. Higgs covers his mouth and nose and heads up the stairs to air out the room.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The storm he had seen earlier is here now, raging overhead and turning the sand and dirt to muck just outside the metal edge of the front stoop. His breath fogs in white clouds and the wind is strong; the shelter creaks in bursts and the timefall thuds terribly loud on the roof above him, almost threatening. Like before, though, something is different. He checks his hands with a glance, relieved to find them still there and not a formless swirl of particles. It’s then an almost unconscious thought to walk forward, let go of the doorframe and shuffle closer to the open entrance. Just enough for him to see through the darkness.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He can taste the chiralium. At least, it’s what he attributes the metallic and electric buzzing on the back of his tongue to. Instinct makes him swallow it back, crackling in his throat and filling his entire chest. Contaminated.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s also the monsters. Beached Things, sprouting from the ground on cords, hovering still and stagnant in a mass of tar but he knows they’ll hunt him soon as he makes a noise. The same things that fizzled into existence around the necrotizing body of his Daddy, welcoming another to the other side, surrounding them both. Higgs has felt fear plenty of times before, but nothing like the cold vice that had threaded fingers between his ribs and gripped him there, knees in the earth, death out for him. Faced with the monsters of his Daddy’s stories he had made it back alive by pure luck—running as fast as he could, avoiding the reaching arms of ink and paranormal moans of the ones following him, forgetting to keep low and quiet.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He remembers the lessons now, if only for the relative safety and familiarity of his home around him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There are four BTs that he can see, standing guard from the open arch all the way until they fade out in the heavy fog and rain, but only one is close enough to stir shivers up his spine.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>DOOMs wasn’t a regular topic of their bedtime tales, but it came up just enough that Higgs knows it isn’t natural. A mutation, disease, he doesn’t know what to call it and doubts Daddy would have ever told him the truth if he’d thought to ask. DOOMs doesn’t hurt, whatever it is. The strong sense of chiralium, the sight of a fully-formed BT, his hands dissipating into a fine mist. A terrifying rush of adrenaline, but nothing painful. At least if there was one gift that man could have given him before he turned into a herald of voidouts and strandings, it would be this.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Large handprints mark the mud. They make a noise that is too loud for the slow movement of the BT, but they are heading straight for him perched at the edge of the shelter, and his heart thumps offbeat. He stares at it, unmoving with eyes wide trying not to breathe too loud, until it is right in front of him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The sound it suddenly makes is like it, impossibly, sees him too—an otherworldly cry pitched simultaneously high and low—and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, buzzing with static. Higgs hisses a sharp, “What the fuck,” and stumbles backwards, tripping over his own feet and landing hard on his tailbone. He winces but doesn’t look away from the floating figure.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then it seems to reach out for him, and his survival instinct kicks in, forcing him up and into a run. He can almost feel it against his back before he passes the threshold and throws the heavy door closed behind him with a slam.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He pants with his back against the steel in a momentary effort to calm himself; nothing can get him inside here. Fingernails pressing into the skin of his left hand ground him, and he sighs, “Jesus fucking Christ.” Daddy would have slapped him senseless had he heard those words come out of his son’s mouth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay,” he resets. Exhaustion pulls at his bones, and there’s still a bit of work to be done before he can sleep away this nightmare.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Higgs rounds the corner of the hall and stands in the middle of the open doorway. The place is a mess. It wasn’t unusual for objects to be thrown when words were as well, yet never to this degree—nobody wanted just another hassle to clean up. Nearly everything previously on the desk had been scattered about the floor, journals and books and heavy artifacts purely used as paperweights. One of their cupboards was emptied, tossing plastic plates and bowls that had bounced off the walls and landed mostly in a single heap near the back corner. Their standing lamp, knocked over on its mangled shade with the bulb popped, dark and unshattered, leaving the overhead light to warm the room with its single dim glow. Posters ripped off the wall, pictures he drew as a child brought out and shoved wrinkled into his face before falling to the floor as well, his pillow off in the next room; fifteen years of creating and collecting nearly destroyed by one man’s tantrum. The chairs at the dining table thrown blindly and shattered at the joints, the table itself leaning haphazardly with a leg missing. Daddy’s monitor with a new crack in the screen. In the center of it all lies the bloodstain, large and red-brown.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Overwhelmed, Higgs starts with the pictures. He fixes what he can, or what he has the energy for. Not everything will be cleaned tonight, but he can make it manageable enough to sleep in, and throwing out the larger pieces of broken furniture can be a task for tomorrow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In a side closet is a rug they had used all but for a couple days, rolled up and stuffed inside to collect dust for three years. Small, oval and dark green, tightly woven together. Daddy had called it ugly. Higgs takes it now and uncurls it, shakes out the dust and dirt and tries not to breathe it all in, and lays it atop the bloodstain. It doesn’t cover it perfectly—not the right shape or size, there’s a splatter of blood filling the hairline cracks in the concrete where Higgs had been, taking the brunt of that initial spill—but it is enough.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If anyone ever asks why, he won’t be able to say the reason behind pulling his cot out from the corner of the wall and setting it on top of the rug, on top of everything. Maybe he doesn’t want to stare at the scene all night, maybe he wants to be as close as he can to what remains of his father, maybe he’s just redecorating.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But now, he’s tired. With the light flicked off he crawls into his bundle of sheets and blankets pulled from both cots and closes dry eyes. For all the day has been full of adrenaline and emotions he wishes not to name, sleep comes quickly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nothing is different in the morning.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He faces his reflection by artificial light and works through his routine. Brushes his teeth, runs a comb through his hair, applies kohl to his eyes. Higgs almost manages a smile. Daddy never did like that last one… but he isn’t here anymore, and whether that’s a good thing or not has yet to be seen. At least for now, if he truly wants to give this a sick optimistic twist, he can say that he’s finally standing in a home he has sole reign over. It’s freeing. He’s grown old enough to know what he’s doing, and what he should do next.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The pile of supplies he’d been trying to gather in secret over months of deliveries had barely been touched, fortunately. Sure they’d been taken from the backpack and strewn across the room, but everything meant to travel outside is made a bit more durable than their decades-old furniture. Condensed food blocks and a canteen, socks, rope, a knife, a timefall-resistant tarp he had only managed to obtain by luck and perseverance, receiving a delivery while his Daddy was passed out and begging the porter for anything they could give. He can avoid the rain for the most part, but in dire circumstances this should help.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A plan half-forms in his head, and Higgs wastes no time in grabbing the backpack and getting to work. The shelter can wait. He can’t stay here, not without viable support, and certainly not now that his dream of running away from this place has suddenly become an option, a reality. He will find community elsewhere. He will make this new world his own.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>crossposted to my <a href="https://transsambridges.tumblr.com">tumblr</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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